Out of Order

Out of Order
Alexis Sears
RRP:
NZ$ 31.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 26.39
Paperback
Not defined - 104pg
29 Mar 2022 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9781637680322
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
A debut collection featuring formally diverse poems that address topics from misogyny and mental health to race and identity. Alexis Sears' s debut collection, Out of Order, is a collage of unapologetic intimacy, risk-taking vulnerability, and unwavering candor. A biracial millennial woman, Sears navigates the challenges of growing out of girlhood and into womanhood with its potential dangers, interrogating the male gaze, beauty standards, and confidence and identity. Pop culture references run through the collection, with rock icons David Bowie and Prince and poets like Kenneth Koch offering windows into desire and adaptation. In these poems, Sears works through heavy topics, such as loneliness, mental illness, chronic pain, the legacies of race and racism, and the aftermath of a father' s suicide. As she writes, "I' m learning something every ravishing day / and none of it is easy. " This young poet demonstrates an uncommon mastery of craft, writing in forms including the sonnet redouble, sestina, canzone, and villanelle. With all her linguistic skills, Sears' s work remains approachable, offering readers a striking blend of honesty, humor, anguish, joy, and surprise. Drawing influence from contemporary poets like Mark Jarman, Erica Dawson, and Tiana Clark, Sears cuts a path of her own. Out of Order was the 2021 winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize.
"Out of Order by Alexis Sears is an irreverent interrogation of loss that insists on the poet' s right to explore grief on her own terms. Bringing a conversational tone into villanelles and sonnets, Sears unsettles readerly expectations with a singsong cadence as she meditates on a father' s suicide and on friends' suicidal ideation. " * The Poetry Foundation, Harriet Books * "Sears' ability to fuse absolute candor about her own vulnerabilities with formal virtuosity-even humor-is remarkable. That humor-bleak, ironic, sometimes hopeful-lends her work an electric charge, the touch of exhilaration that is art' s recompense for pain. . . Out of Order sings through the pain, seeking the grace to move beyond the hurt that lingers. " * Literary Matters * "If you have never read Sears, prepare yourself. Her poems draw blood. It' s hard to think of a debut collection since Heart' s Needle [by W. D. Snodgrass] that is at once so deeply felt and so finely tuned. In her hands, form is the fist that delivers the blow, conveying the pure force of language. With so much at stake-identity, melancholia, a father' s suicide in a distant place-feeling could easily overwhelm and blur, but Sears' s poems remain precise and richly textured. Her poems do not succumb; they triumph, as we do, thrillingly, through them. " -- David Yezzi, author of Black Sea "There is a danger in writing about yourself, your obsessions, your insecurities, your deeply personal memories, to where it is almost a workshop stricture to avoid such things where possible. Sears, though, knows that her pain is not different, and she writes about herself in a manner both critical and compassionate, analytical and empathetic, and with such technical savvy and linguistic confidence, that the reader, regardless of their biographical specifics, can not only identify with her, but viscerally understand what it is to be young (at least relatively so) in this historical moment. " -- Quincy R. Lehr, author of The Dark Lord of the Tiki Bar "Sears dazzles while writing and reckoning with form. The sonnet crown, villanelle, sestina, and epic are honed by obsessions woven with levity amidst the madness of trauma and loss. I applaud the startling specificity, emotional truths, and stunning similes spilling throughout this collection. Out of Order packs a potent poetic punch with glosses to W. H. Auden, Kurt Cobain, and crying in Priuses. Here' s to a poet that takes risks on the page with lyric grit and brilliance. " -- Tiana Clark, author of I Can' t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood
Alexis Sears lives in Northern California, where she teaches sixth-grade English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cortland Review, Hopkins Review, Cimarron Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and elsewhere.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9781637680322
Published: 29 Mar 2022
Published In: United States
Imprint: Autumn House Press
Publisher: Autumn House Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 9mm
Width: 6mm
Spine: 1mm
Pages: 104

In stock - for items in stock we aim to dispatch the next business day. For delivery in NZ allow 2-5 business days, with rural taking a wee bit longer.

Locally sourced in NZ - stock comes from a NZ supplier with an approximate delivery of 7-15 business days.

International Imports - stock is imported into NZ, depending on air or sea shipping option from the international supplier stock can take 10-30 working days to arrive into NZ. 

Pre-order Titles - delivery will vary depending on where the title is published, if local stock is available in NZ then 5-7 business days, for international imports it can be 10-30 business days. In all cases we will access the quickest supply option.

Delivery Packaging - we ship all items in cardboard sleeves or by box with either packing paper or corn starch chips. (We avoid using plastics bubble bags)

Tracking - Orders are delivered by track and trace courier and are fully insured, tracking information will be sent by email once dispatched.

View our full Order & Delivery information